Protester stands her ground at MLK museum

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- Jacqueline Smith put up quite a fight to launch her one-woman protest outside a museum at the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

Now, 13 years later, she's still at it -- and bracing for another struggle.

''I just have to stand my ground,'' said Smith, who since 1988 has perched herself on the public sidewalks outside the National Civil Rights Museum.

She tells all who will listen that the museum -- the former Lorraine Motel -- should be a homeless shelter, a medical clinic for the poor or a senior citizens center.

And while the museum is regarded by many as a jewel for downtown Memphis, Smith calls it a tourist trap. It draws more than 125,000 visitors a year and is packed each Jan. 15th -- the national holiday in King's honor.

Smith's protest began when the Lorraine was shut down, remodeled and then reopened as a museum to America's struggle for civil rights.

A former worker at the Lorraine, Smith was its last resident, and she was hauled away by sheriff's deputies who dumped her on a nearby sidewalk.

Rather than accept the eviction, she set up a protest outside the motel, claiming that the museum distorts King's legacy.

Walking the sidewalk or sitting on a sofa backed by a large sign urging visitors to boycott the museum, she talks quietly with passers-by.

A folding table holds protest pamphlets and a large, yard umbrella provides cover in inclement weather. Sometimes, she sleeps on the sofa.

Many museum visitors stop, but the protest has had no measurable effect on attendance.

''I just can't stop what I'm doing,'' she said.

But now, the museum is expanding. The city notified Smith on Jan. 3 that she must temporarily move from the sidewalk because it's part of the construction site.

''We are worried about her safety. We are not at all trying to silence her protest,'' museum director Beverly Robertson said. ''The museum defends a person's right to protest.''

The Lorraine, a popular downtown motel for blacks during racial segregation, was a crumbling haven for prostitutes and drug users in its last years.

A citizens' group rallied to save the Lorraine in 1982 and eventually convinced state and local governments to turn it into a museum.

It opened in 1991 and has become a center for civil rights history and education. Through multimedia displays, it tells the story of the civil rights struggle from the country's beginnings to King's death. The expansion will carry that story into the present.

King was in town to help lead a strike by sanitation workers and was standing on the Lorraine's second-floor balcony when he was killed. James Earl Ray admitted firing the shot from a nearby flophouse, though he tried until his death in prison in 1998 to take back his confession.

The museum expansion will take in the rooming house and several other buildings, and likely will include about a block of Mulberry Street, a side street in front of the Lorraine.

Smith, who has never been inside the museum, holds her vigil on a public sidewalk along Mulberry.

City Attorney Robert Spence said his office can seek a court order for Smith's removal but so far no request has been made.

''She could continue her protest in some area adjacent to the construction zone,'' Spence said.

Smith, who is about 50, vowed to resist any attempts to move her.

In 1990, she won a court order saying she could stay on the sidewalk but had to get rid of her tent because it was blocking pedestrian traffic.

Smith, unemployed and apparently homeless, said friends and supporters back her protest through donations, though she declines to name them.

Smith grew up in Memphis and showed promise as a young opera singer. She was offered a voice scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi following an audition for a regional committee of the New York Metropolitan Opera. She turned it down.

Smith said she moved to the Lorraine in 1972 to work as a waitress and maid, but the motel became a home, not just a place of employment.

Now, she said, she rents a small storage shed for her few possessions and spends up to 20 hours a day on the sidewalk, occasionally taking breaks at low-cost motels or the homes of friends.

Robertson says she isn't sure how often Smith is at her post.

''Many evenings she leaves, and she's not out there when I come back by there at nighttime,'' Robertson said.